  JOHN R. BOWEN Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences, Sociocultural Anthropology Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1984 314-935-5680 Website jbowen[at]wustl.edu |
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| JOHN R. BOWEN Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences, Sociocultural Anthropology Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1984 314-935-5680 Website jbowen[at]wustl.edu |
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My research is concerned primarily with the role of cultural forms (religious practices, aesthetic genres, legal discourse) in processes of social change. In much of my work I have looked outward from a long-term research site in the Gayo highlands of Sumatra to the broader transformations taking place in the Indonesian nation and the worldwide Muslim community. For the past five years I also have been working in France on Muslim and French adaptations to a new, plural society.
My first three books examined issues of religion, culture, and politics in Indonesia. In the first, I studied changes in Sumatran political structures and cultural forms since 1900, and included analysis of oratory, song, and historical narratives. A second book traces divergences in religious institutions and ideas since the 1920s. In it, I examine how Gayo men and women draw on Islamic formulations in carrying out their activities of farming, healing, praying, and burying the dead. My third book concerned issues of legal change, and it grows out of research on Islamic and civil courts in Indonesia. A forthcoming book attempts to explain the widespread support in France (but hardly anywhere else) for the recent law against religious signs in schools. Along the way, I have worked on ethnic conflict, comparative method, and the anthropology of religion.
Most students working with me share this interest in social and cultural change. Among their projects are health in Indonesia, law in Zanzibar, and Haitian churches in St. Louis.
I am currently working with colleagues in several departments to develop an International Initiative on Pluralism and Politics. The Initiative will build collaborative research ties with researchers in key international institutions, and support the exchange of graduate students and faculty. We are beginning with institutions in Paris, and will begin to expand to several other countries in 2004-2005.
For more information see the overview of the department's research in sociocultural anthropology.
Religion, Law, and Pluralism; Social Theory and Anthropology; Religion and Ritual
Bowen, John R.
2007 "A View from France on the Internal Complexity of National Models", Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33(6): 1003 - 1016 [pdf]
2007 "Anti-Americanism as Schemas and Diacritics across Indonesia and France," in Peter Katzenstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Anti-Americanisms in World Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [pdf]
2006 Why the French Don't Like Headscarves (Princeton: Princeton University Press). [website]
2006 "France's Revolt: Can the Republic Live Up to its Ideals?" Boston Review, January/February, pp. 29-32. [pdf]
2005 "Normative Pluralism in Indonesia: Regions, Religions, and Ethnicities," in Will Kymlicka and Boagang He, eds., Multiculturalism in Asia: Theoretical Perspectives, pp. 152-69. Oxford University Press. [pdf]
2004 Religions in Practice: An Approach to the Anthropology of Religion, 3rd revised edition. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. [website]
2004 "Pluralism and Normativity in French Islamic Reasoning", in Robert Hefner, ed., Islam, Pluralism, and Democratization. Princeton: Princeton University Press. [pdf]
2004 "Beyond Migration: Islam as a Transnational Public Space," Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30 (5). [pdf]
2004 "Does French Islam Have Borders? Dilemmas of Domestication in a Global Religious Field," American Anthropologist 106(1): 43-55. [pdf]
2004 "Muslims and Citizens: France's Headscarf Controversy", Boston Review February/March, pp. 31-35. [pdf]
2003 The Development of Southeast Asian Studies in the United States. In The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, edited by David L. Szanton. University of California Press/University of California International and Area Studies Digital Collection, Edited Volume #3, 2003. [website]
2003 Islam, Law and Equality in Indonesia : An Anthropology of Public Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Awarded the 2004 Herbert Jacobs Prize by the Law and Society Association for the "outstanding book" of 2001-2003.
1999 (with Roger Petersen) Critical Comparisons in Politics and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1993 Muslims Through Discourse: Religion and Ritual in Gayo Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
